The first question that probably comes to your mind vis-à-vis A.R. Gurney's newest
play is
likely to be: Is it newsworthy in that it lifts the playwright above his status as America's premier
stage interpreter of upper middle class WASP life? I'll answer that rhetorical
question with three of my own:

If you can take a bright young man out of Milwaukee for a naval tour of duty in Japan, can you
also excise the values brewed into him as a member of family whose brewery paid
for his Ivy League education?

Will the addition of such relevant issues as gays in the armed services, give a '90s sensibility to
a story that deliberately links itself to several favorite '50s movies?

Can "star playwright" provenance, strong production values and acting
captivate audiences into ignoring the play's predictability and leaving them satisfied that they've
seen an interesting new play instead of
a been-there, seen that yawner?

The question about Sparky Watt's transcendence of his American Midwestern value
system begs a fence straddling answer: temporarily yes -- but in the long run, no. Sparky (Scott
Wolf) is a charming straight-shooter. He's eager to experience life beyond his own milieu but
sufficiently grounded in conventional ambition to recognize that this will look good on his
application to the Harvard business school. He is more an experience gatherer, than a young man
experiencing deep-seated change (as his country is about to experience deep-seated changes). He,
as well as his three on-stage colleagues, (four if you count the narrator-reader), are Gurney-
proofed for a high likability quotient. And so, for all the geographic distance from the
playwright's usual locales, Far East is painted in a familiar Gurney palette: bland and
pleasant.

As to whether the gays-in-the-armed services secondary story gives this '50s story a '90s
relevancy, I'm afraid the golden oldie movie tie-in wins the day. The playwright has already
taken a stab at this sort of timeliness by introducing a Gurney Gay into a cast of Gurney WASPS (see Les Gutman's review of Labor Day. Now we have another Gay man who is
sympathetically portrayed by Paul Fitzgerald. But for all the resonance of the
dialogue and the touch of John Le Carre intrigue, the Gay connection does little to help
Far
East separate itself from Love Is a Many Splendored Thing and
From Here to Eternity (used as leitmotif verbal and musical references). Neither do the
touches of Ugly
Americanism add anything new enough to sharpen the picture of a social order caught between
the end of one war and on the brink of another.

That brings us to the question of whether craftsmanship on the part of author, actors and
director can carry the day for this world premiere. Since Mr. Gurney can never be accused of
not knowing how to construct a play and his dialogue is
often affecting and tinged with gently sardonic humor and this so, propped up by the smart
direction and acting, Far East has enough going for it to keep boredom at bay. Will it
seed
discussion and thought that will make it stick to the mind long after the shoji screens have slid
shut for the last time? No.

Scott Wolf, who engaged our sympathy as a young hoodlum from the slums in WTF's summer
'97 revival of Dead End, is
equally winning as a young man from the right side of the tracks. He brings a
just right brash charm to the young navy officer who comes to his tour of duty with a clear
sense of entitlement to the best life has to offer but ends up feeling committed
to both the Navy and a Japanese girl. His deepening relationship with his superior
officer, (Bill Smitrovich), makes for some of the play's best
scenes. On the other hand, his love for the always off-stage Japanese girl friend is never
anything more than a device
to create conflict. This is less attributable to the actor, than the part he's been dealt. Bill Smitrovich's Captain Anderson, also an on target performance, is the most rounded character. He shows the clear sense of a father finding a bit of his dead son , (a Korean war casualty), in Sparky as well as man whose overriding passion for flying, precludes more satisfactory relationships.

Linda Emond who has proved herself as an actress of great versatility -- (in Nine
Armenians, as
John Adams' wife in the musical 1776 and most recently as a Hollywood wife in The
Dying Gaul)
-- is wonderful, or at least as wonderful her character permits her to be. The
dancing scene with Sparky lifts their interaction well above similar counterparts in old
B-movies. Ms. Emond even manages to look good in the three gosh-awful dresses that
seem cut from the same '50s Simplicity pattern. Her scenes with her husband and Sparky's
commanding officer are equally strong on authentic emotion. However, as good as she is, Ms.
Emond can't put flesh on a character written to double as symbols.

As Sparky's romance with the
Japanese waitress is a device, so Julia's role is the "hook" for introducing historic
significance into this precursor to inter-racial marriages and changing images of Asian women
as Geishas. As the Japan-based emissary from WASP-dom (she went to Smith with
Sparky's aunt) and the Voice of America (for which she used to work), she must play the symbolic meddler. This symbolic role depletes the flesh and blood character of the
woman torn between jealousy (of her husband's relationship with a
Fillipino woman) and sexual yearning (for Sparky).

If only she could have slipped out of her
crinolines for a juicy From Here to
Eternity scene, instead of being forced to retreat into a significant silences. While the
second act is
dramatically superior to the first, it is here that Ms. Emond and her fellow actors are hobbled
by the demand made upon them to become the embodiments social ferment in the making.

To add to the plus side of the play's ledger, Gurney
who's no stranger to smart, effective gimmicks -- (For example: . Later Life, a four
actor play peopled with a cast of twelve by virtue of having two of the actors play ten
deliciously zany
characters) -- here introduces some dramatic touches that work very well. A fifth actor
(Tohoru Masamune) is well used as a reader who at times assumes the persona of unseen
characters. Whether the idea of the playwright or the director, the percussionist (Pun
Boonyarata-Pun) and a mute ensemble of on-stage
assistants add atmosphere and movement to Michael Brown's evocative set, beautifully lit by
Rui Rita.

Undoubtedly, Far East will travel, (hopefully, with some further editing), beyond this
northeastern premiere since the Gurney
by-line is an audience drawing card. To wit, the Williamstown Theatre Festival's limited run
was sold out before it opened last Thursday.

Two footnotes for trivial pursuit players: 1. Captain Anderson's reference to
"The whole nine yards" unlike the movie references predates the actual use of that term by a
decade. The phrase, which originated in the building trade, did not come into general usage until
the 1960s. 2. Aas the recent Labor Day was an expansion of a previous success,
The Cocktail Hour, so Far East is an expansion of one of the letters in the
super-popular two-hander, Love Letters